Category: Character

“Be on guard against him yourself, for he vigorously opposed our teaching.” 2 Timothy 4:15 Listen up, Pastors: It felt so right to get it right that I won’t ever forget the good feeling in my soul or the shocked look on her face. She had been in the church several weeks, was already in …

I confess to a little ‘blogger’s block’ the past few weeks, at least in part due to my own grieving over the fall, failure, fallout, and firestorm about men formerly in ministry who are very dear to me personally. In the past two years, I count 6 or 7 . . . wow, wow, wow. Knowing …

Hey, I just came out with my new book, Act Like Men: 40 Studies for Biblical Manhood. I wrote it because men are in trouble, and God has a lot to say about manhood that we need to hear. As of yesterday, it became available in stores, and I hope it will be a challenge …

It’s the National Day of Prayer, and our country and its president have never needed our prayers more. Please pray for my friend @GregLaurie, and for his courageous stand in the face of intimidation not to pray before the nation at this event in Washington. I respect his courage, rooted in the story of Daniel …

Happy Friday…I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot this week. I think that’s partly because I spoke at Moody Founders Week—she always used to loved to come and hear me there. We also just passed her third birthday in heaven, which was January 31—I’m sure she had an awesome day.

The sum total of human opinion is often very inaccurate—and we are neither as bad as our critics say, nor as good as our fans say. I like to make scriptural lists…and the one I brought to church with me last weekend was this list of five biblical thoughts on public opinion.

Pastors! Are you practicing your preaching and knowing the peace of mind that comes from personal purity? Are you living inside the boundaries God has established? Hebrews 13:4 – “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.“

It was Solomon who remarked that “there is nothing new under the sun” and age/experience seem to often confirm what youthful idealism might tend to dismiss. Spurgeon’s book Lectures to My Students is filled with content that reveals the commonality of pastoral struggles and the immense wisdom gleaned from the Scriptures and his experience.

Hey: Sometimes my best movie-watching experience is an old favorite vs. something new—and I think the same can be true about blog posts. Back in July before the Vertical Church Tour, I posted something I hoped would be helpful to pastors facing criticism, from the trenches

When Kathy and I were in seminary in the late eighties, we began to pray, “God, we will go anywhere you want us to go, but if You would allow it, we would like to pastor one church for our ministry.” I had already been a youth pastor at a church of two hundred

This weekend I preached from John 2:13-22, on Christ’s response to the consumer mindset that had taken over the temple. And nothing is more of an axe to the tree of vertical church—of God church, of glory church—than “consumer church.”

Today I commend to you this guest post from Dr. R.C. Sproul Jr., Teaching Fellow at Ligonier Ministries. I hope you find it helpful and encouraging. It takes two to tango, and that doesn’t even include the band. Our choices, our behaviors,

Nothing is more essential to success in the Christian life than perseverance. It’s the ingredient you have to have. Faith gets you started; perseverance keeps you going. Jesus said, “He who endures to the end will be saved” (Mark 13:13). That ought to cause us some concern. He who endures to the end will …

I have had to apologize a lot through the years—for things I did, for things I should have done, or should have done better. I have been back at it in recent days, and a couple of weeks ago I shared with the church family what I have learned in Apology School.

There are seasons of incredible joy in ministry, and there are inevitably seasons where conflict rears its ugly head and needs to be dealt with. I have come to believe that failure in the season of conflict—failure to deal with it, failure to learn from it, failure to move beyond it—prevents entrance into a new …

This weekend we began an expanded, updated version of what I believe is the most impactful teaching that we’ve ever done at Harvest. We’re calling it, “Lord, Change Me.” Because faulty, man-centered methods for change will always

The key to life change is forgetting, not remembering. Try remembering that next time you are sitting with a friend or counselor who is digging deeply into your past in the hopes of impacting your future for good. Consider the life of Joseph. If anyone was a candidate for ten years of therapy

Look at Romans 6:10, “For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all. But the life that He lives, He lives to God.” Some Bible teachers argue that change is all about God and not about us at all. All we really need to do in order to experience the transforming …

In Psalm 46:10, the Lord exhorts us to “Be still, and know that I am God.” It’s counsel I need to heed more frequently, and you probably do too. So whatever else you are doing right now, STOP. Cease striving. Take a few minutes for this account of God’s unconditional pursuit of one young man. …

I have the tremendous blessing of being surrounded by a highly-motivated and highly-competitive staff, numbering some 400+. What I have observed is that if we are not intentional about selfless relationships that bless and encourage, we can find ourselves ‘writing checks’ we can’t cover and overdraft with the very people we care about most.

Well another former colleague, a pastor I have known for 20 years, was fired recently. I wish I could tell a tale of harsh Elders, or demanding congregants, but based upon first-hand accounts, he hung himself. Not literally, but literally figuratively. As I often say, the crises of life are a way of revealing something …

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